On the Road to Recovery : College football: Under NCAA sanctions, the Sooners are trying to clean up their image with Gibbs as coach. One thing hasn’t changed: They still win.

If nothing else, the Oklahoma Sooners of old were good for a scandal or two. Or three. Or four.

You had your Barry Switzer. Your Boz. Your steroids. Your quarterback selling cocaine.

You had your three R’s, too: rap sheets, recruiting and the rat-tat-a-tat-tat of machine-gun fire at the university’s Bud Wilkinson House.

“Hard Copy” would have loved this place 18 months ago. It was an NCAA investigator’s dream. And an Oklahoma nightmare.

“It was just a few incidents that tarnished us,” linebacker Chris Wilson said. “Five people were trying to tarnish 100 years of greatness. That’s a frustrating feeling.”

Now look at it. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think you were visiting the Brigham Young campus, what with all the “Yes, sirs” and “No, sirs” going around. There isn’t a scandal in sight, unless you include pillow fights.

For instance, security at Wilkinson House, the school’s athletic dormitory, is so tight, you need Siegfried and Roy to get in. Players sign “truth statements,” the university’s version of an honor system for class attendance. There are a dress code, a curfew and an emphasis on image.

There is also Tom Hill, an assistant athletic director who has already booted at least one of the Sooners’ finest recruits for ignoring his warnings about going to class.

But the most glaring difference involves coaches. Gone is Switzer, the King. In his place is Gary Gibbs, the second-year boss who rules in a much different fashion.

“It’s different,” Wilson said. “But I guess it’s like a job. Once new management comes in, you adapt.”

This is the new Oklahoma, all right--the repentant Oklahoma, the probation-scarred and scared Oklahoma. Bland as tap water, the 1990 version of Sooner football continues to put distance between itself and a checkered past.

The Oklahoma of old did win championships, lots of them: six national and 33 in the various conferences the Sooners have played in since 1895. But it also caused controversy and embarrassment. Held up to the light by the NCAA, Sooner football was ultimately found to be as dirty as a dust rag.

Upheaval followed. Switzer was forced out as coach and later wrote a best-selling book about it. Charles Thompson, who made the mistake of selling cocaine to undercover police, is serving time in the Big House . . . and wrote a book about it. Brian Bosworth, another ex-Sooner author, is making action-packed B movies.

Everyone and anyone who had something to do with Oklahoma’s downfall is gone, some more gracefully than others.

And guess what. The Sooners are the better for it. This season they find themselves 5-0 and ranked fourth in the country. They can’t go to a bowl, but they could win, if the stars and moon are aligned just so, another national championship.

Don’t laugh. It has been done before. Just ask the soap opera-handsome Gary Gibbs, who earned a championship ring while spending New Year’s Day, 1975, at home with his Oklahoma teammates. Those Sooners finished the year 11-0, recorded three shutouts and didn’t allow any of the eight other opponents to score more than two touchdowns apiece. Probation kept them out of postseason play, but not from finishing atop the polls.

Of course, few Oklahoma faithful are comparing this year’s Sooners to the ones in the 1974 season. There is no Lee Roy Selmon, no Dewey Selmon, no Tinker Owens, no Joe Washington on the roster in 1990.

“We’re not a dominant team,” said Gibbs, who played linebacker on that 1974 team and spent the next 14 years as a Sooner assistant coach. “We’re not a great team. We’re nowhere close to where we were back in the middle ‘80s.”

But oddly enough, this might turn out to be the most satisfying season the century-old school has witnessed. For a pleasant change, Oklahoma football has become a good citizen, an example--can you believe it?--of the right way of restructuring priorities.

And to think, all it took was enough misery and heartache to last another 100 years.

“We’re trying to re-establish credibility among the press, the fans, the supporters,” Gibbs said. “But those things were ongoing.

“We’ve made a lot of headway. But I think people in this part of the country feel better about Oklahoma and what we stand for as opposed to people from afar.”

If ever there was a school that overdosed on football, this was it. Gibbs saw the excesses and understood the dangers of it all. He watched his friend and mentor Switzer get gobbled up by circumstances, some preventable, some not.

In the end, Switzer couldn’t or wouldn’t control the “monster,” as he called it, that is Oklahoma football. Instead, he is now an occasional visitor to Sooner practices, where he stands on the sidelines and pretends there isn’t a part of him that misses being a coach.

“It’s strange,” tight end Adrian Cooper said of Switzer’s appearances, “I miss him a whole lot. He’s the primary reason for me coming to Oklahoma.”

In his place is the anti-Switzer: Mr. Clean. The Sooners wanted a disciplinarian with a heart. Well, they got him. They wanted a keen football mind and they got that, too.

Athletic Director Donnie Duncan is the man who recommended that the school hire Gibbs. The thought of pursuing an outsider, a big-name coach with a reputation, never crossed Duncan’s mind.

After all, Duncan had tried to lure Gibbs to Iowa State in 1978. Duncan was the coach and he needed a defensive coordinator. Gibbs was all of 24.

“I was coaching (at Oklahoma) when Gary played,” Duncan said. “Gary later came on as a part-time coach. From Day 1, it was obvious Gary Gibbs was ahead of his time. He was brilliant. He was always able to understand concepts.”

As hoped, Gibbs accepted Duncan’s offer to fly to Iowa State for an interview.

One problem: “Gary visited up there in the middle of winter,” Duncan said.

Ames, Iowa, may be a wonderful place during the other three seasons, but during winter you can barely feel your toes. Gibbs, who had never lived farther north than Norman, stayed put.

Eleven years later, Duncan offered Gibbs another job--Switzer’s.

“From the standpoint of leading our program, I knew that every decision that had to be made by Gary Gibbs would be made in the direction that we needed to go,” Duncan said.

The direction is simple enough--away, far away, from the eye of the NCAA. Oklahoma needs another investigation like it needs another tell-all book.

No problem for Gibbs. For all the accusations made against the school’s recruiting methods in the past--and there have been many--Gibbs’ name has never been mentioned as a possible rules violator. In fact, so sure is Duncan of Gibbs’ preventive efforts, he all but guarantees success.

“The solution is the same solution everywhere,” Duncan said. “You have to have the right type of individuals in your program first. Then you have to have a structure that keeps them that way or eliminates them if they’re not that way.”

In recent years, Oklahoma had neither. Switzer was a gifted recruiter, an ultra-successful coach and the great communicator, but he and Duncan lost grip of the football program. A lack of “institutional control” are the words the NCAA uses to describe such things.

There are other mandates. Duncan and university President Richard L. Van Horn want the student part of student-athlete emphasized more. Enter Hill, who single-handedly is reshaping the image of Oklahoma, the football factory.

How big a part does Hill play? Consider this: The Sooner football calendar, usually chock-full of game scenes and star player mug shots, took on a different look in 1990. Featured prominently is Gibbs, which is understandable enough, and Hill, the academic guru. Imagine that!

Still, it is Gibbs who serves as the point man, the guy who has been asked to win games and nationwide respect all at the same time. So far, so good.

“We understand that we’re in the light, that we’re being watched,” Gibbs said. “People are always going to judge us because of the circumstances of the last 18 months. We’ve got to make sure that we’re cognizant of that scrutiny.”

No problem there. Hardly a week goes by that Gibbs isn’t asked about Switzer or the controversy that enveloped Oklahoma football like a mushroom cloud. To each question, Gibbs recites a variation of the same answer he has given since he was hired:

--He isn’t Barry Switzer Jr.

--He promises no miracles.

--He will do things his way.

Only when asked about Switzer’s continued visits to practice sessions does Gibbs show a spark of emotion.

“This is part of him,” Gibbs said. “This program, these kids . . . this is part of Coach Switzer.”

Moments later, Gibbs is back to being Gibbs: calm, reserved and--how does one put this tactfully?--dull.

Watch Gibbs on his weekly show and you see a man who would rather be cleaning his attic than looking into a television camera. News conferences aren’t much better.

Married for 14 years, father of two daughters, Gibbs could start now and never be half the hell-raiser Switzer was.

“I don’t believe I’ve seen Gary do anything crazy,” Duncan said. “But Gary knows who he is. He knows he’s not a comedian. He knows he has been handed one of the top football traditions in the country.”

And isn’t that the point?

Today’s game against longtime rival Texas will be another indication of how far the Sooners have progressed under Gibbs. Already this season, Oklahoma has beaten UCLA, Pittsburgh and Oklahoma State, along with Tulsa and Kansas.

However, Gibbs, who led the Sooners to a commendable 7-4 record in 1989, warned that Oklahoma is operating under some distinct disadvantages, as designed by NCAA probation.

For example, Oklahoma arrived in Dallas Friday with only three sound linebackers and three defensive ends. With only 80 players on scholarship, as opposed to the usual 95, Gibbs is scrambling for replacement parts.

“We’re No. 4 in the country, but anybody who thinks that we’re back and that we’re not going to have hard times again is fooling themselves,” Gibbs said. “We’ve got a long ways to go before we can get our program back to where we’re comfortable with the talent and the numbers and the depth, given the kind of schedule we’ll be playing.”

UCLA Coach Terry Donahue might disagree. Oklahoma beat his Bruins, 34-14. The next week, the Sooners trounced Pitt, 52-10. At the time, Pitt was ranked No. 14.

As usual, the Sooners are winning with their running game. Fullback Kenyon Rasheed, who wasn’t even a starter when fall practice began, is averaging nearly six yards a carry. Quarterbacks Steve Collins, the starter, and Cale Gundy, the occasional replacement, give Oklahoma the semblance of a passing game, a rarity in these parts.

And as you might expect, the Sooners’ defense is solid. Remember, Gibbs is the team’s former defensive coordinator.

It has been a strange, trying journey back to respectability for Oklahoma. Given their druthers, Gibbs and his players probably would like to forget the sins of the past. But nobody is in a hurry to let them--not Duncan, not Van Horn, not the NCAA, not the media. Maybe it’s better that way.

“Those were dark days,” said Cooper, the senior tight end.

But they’re getting brighter. At last.